I love where I'm from. I love the landscape because it is so beautiful, and I also love the people of my community, the people whose stories I'm trying to tell.
Interpretation
The quote expresses deep affection for one's homeland and community, highlighting both its beauty and the value of its people.
In this quote, Jesmyn Ward demonstrates a profound connection to her roots, appreciating both the physical landscape and the narratives woven into the lives of the individuals within her community. This love is not only for the area itself but also for the stories and experiences that shape the fabric of the community, suggesting that our environment and the people within it significantly impact our identity and purpose.
In practice
This quote could be used in a speech about the importance of local culture during a community event.
I always understood my ancestry, like that of so many others in the Gulf Coast, to be a tangle of African slaves, free men of color, French and Spanish immigrants, British colonists, Native Americans - but in what proportion, and what might that proportion tell me about who I thought I was?
In the South, there is more overt racism. It's more willfully ignorant and brazen. But it's not as if by moving I'm going to be able to escape institutionalized racism. It's not as though my life won't be twisted and impacted by racism anymore. It will.
The ugly heart of the South still beats with this idea that one group of people is worth less.
Katrina silenced me for two years. I wrote a 12-page essay on my experience in Katrina, and that's it. I didn't write anything for, like, two, two and a half years after Katrina hit because it was so traumatic.
Hip-hop, which is my generation's blues, is important to the characters that I write about. They use hip-hop to understand the world through language.
With all the main characters that I write, it's always very important to me that they have good and bad aspects of their personality. It's important to me that they're complicated and that they're human.
The important thing is not the object of love, but the emotion itself.
There can be no peace of mind in love, since the advantage one has secured is never anything but a fresh starting-point for future desires.
I do not love a man who is zealous for nothing.
The source of love is deep in us and we can help others realize a lot of happiness. One word, one action, one thought can reduce another person’s suffering and bring that person joy.
Being in love, she concluded, is simply a presentation of our pasts to another individual, mostly packages so unwieldy that we can no longer manage the loosened strings alone.
Love's first snow-drop, virgin kiss.
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